Birth Control Prevents Abortion: Should Be Obvious, But Sadly Disputed

It’s one of those stories that should seem profoundly obvious, but in our culture where misogynist myths and right-wing propaganda so often trump common sense, it was actually something of a revelation: A long-term study in St. Louis that offers women the free birth control of their choice has revealed that, amongst other positive effects, the program lowered the abortion rate for the participants. In fact, the results were dramatic. There were 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the program, compared to a national average of almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women nationally.

That having access to free contraception would make women much better users of contraception shouldn’t be a surprise, and for feminist-minded folks, this study just reaffirmed what we already knew, which is most people will take a good deal when they get it. The problem is that in the past few years, a number of conservatives have taken to denying that there is a link between contraception and lowering the unintended pregnancy rate. Indeed, some anti-choicers have promoted a strange theory that contraception actually raises the abortion rate, because it encourages people to have sex and then to abort the pregnancies that result. Their term for it is the “contraceptive mentality”, and the theory has gained enough traction on the right that it’s being promoted by none other than Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist and an embarrassment to that venerable institution.

The reason anti-choicers have taken to denying that contraception prevents unwanted pregnancy is complex. The argument really arose after pro-choicers began to realize that contraception was the Achilles heel of the anti-choice movement. Anti-choicers claim to oppose abortion because of “life,” but it’s quite obvious to pro-choicers that it’s actually because of a mix of sex negativity and a desire to return to pre-feminist restrictive gender roles, especially for women. Pointing out that anti-choicers fight at every term against improving access to contraception demonstrates how it’s about sex and not life; after all, if they really believed that abortion was about life, they’d be demanding free contraception for all to prevent as many abortions as possible. Realizing that their opposition to contraception was blowing their cover, many anti-choicers simply decided to start arguing that contraception doesn’t actually prevent abortion. That way, they could both keep their cover story about “life” and continue to fight against every technological innovation that allows people to have healthy sex lives and women to keep their fertility from interfering with their life goals.

The claim that access to contraception doesn’t reduce the need for abortion rests on an incredibly misogynist assumption, which is that women are, by nature, too stupid and irresponsible to keep up with a contraception regime, even if you make it easy for them. There’s no way around drawing this conclusion. If you deny outright that women struggle to afford contraception, the only possible reason left that women don’t stick to using it has to be that women themselves are failures. When Rich Lowry says, “by any reasonable standard, we are one of the most lavishly contracepted societies in the history of the planet,” and then concludes that this “lavish” access to contraception hasn’t done much, if anything, to prevent unintended pregnancy, the only implication possible is that he thinks women really are profoundly stupid people who can’t be expected to take even basic care of themselves.

Of course, as the St. Louis study shows, the misogynists are wrong and the feminists are right: Women’s inability to keep up with their need for reliable and accessible contraception says less about women and more about the lack of access. Which means that if you fix the access problem, women do get much better at using contraception. Not perfect, by any means, because women are people and people aren’t perfect. But women aren’t stupid as a class, and if they’re given basic tools to take care of their health, they do a pretty good job. Certainly a much better job than the conservative pundits and politicians who believe they should have the power to make women’s reproductive choices for them.

Obviously, the primary reason to give women more access to affordable contraception is not to lower the abortion rate. The primary reason is that women bear an unfair burden of having to prevent and deal with unplanned pregnancy, and giving them tools to control their bodies is the only just and humane response to this inherent injustice. The second reason is that unplanned pregnancy is a legitimate public health problem, and as with vaccines and clean drinking water, if we have the tools to tackle a public health problem, we should use them. But reducing the abortion rate is a pleasant side effect, if for no other reason than abortion is expensive and most women would rather prevent an unintended pregnancy and the need for an abortion in the first place, for the same reason that most of us would rather not have the need for any kind of medical intervention that we could otherwise avoid.

But as a rhetorical tool, pointing out the effect that access to contraception has on the abortion rate is excellent. It demonstrates neatly that the anti-choice movement doesn’t care about “life” at all, because given the choice between lowering the abortion rate and depriving women of opportunities to prevent unintended pregnancy, they pick the latter every time. Every time an anti-choicer denounces the HHS regulation requiring insurance companies to cover contraception (and counseling on correct use of contraception!) without a copay, they need to be hit with these statistics and asked why they want the American abortion rate to continue to be so high relative to other Western nations with more progressive sexual health policies.

“having access to free contraception would make women much better users of contraception”

How is it free? Didn’t someone have to invent it, concoct it, deliver it, stock it? They are volunteers who get to test the contraception with her? What else could it be?

jennifer-starr

It doesn’t really matter what you call it, it makes a lot more sense than the anti-contraception culture. The Humanae Vitae ‘every sex act must be open to life or else it’s somehow sullied and selfish and not true love’ BS is completely illogical–in truth, I doubt it actually makes sense to the people who spout that nonsense–I think they just parrot what they’ve been taught without actually thinking it through.

give-em-hell-mary

“Free” contraception is my tax and insurance dollars doing what they should: preventing unwanted deadly and bankrupting pregnancies that threaten public health. Similarly, my tax and insurance dollars already cover STD and prostate cancer treatments for you men, and I’m not protesting that. Why do you protest reproductive health for women? Are you a pedophile priest who can’t afford frequent sex tours to the Philippines?

blissed

“Free” contraception is my tax and insurance dollars doing what they should: preventing unwanted deadly and bankrupting pregnancies that threaten public health”

Then, by logic, voluntarily opening the gate to cheap easy effortless sex with numerous always willing men threatens public health. Ruination for a marriage prospect notwithstanding. Then yes, we have got a pretty serious public health menace lurking about…

give-em-hell-mary

You’re ignoring that men have been having cheap, STD-infested sex with desperately poor street orphans, hookers, concubines, wives, girlfriends, daughters, and rape victims for thousands of years. No contraception, especially with wives, equals 20 to several hundred sickly and starving kids per man, plus one-in-five dead mothers and three-in-five jilted mothers suffering childbirth fistulas. Your blessed dystopia is a public health menace that no modern nation can afford.

And we get it that you are an unmarriagable scary creep who stiffs hookers.

blissed

…requires free contraception. Marcotte is no dope after all

jennifer-starr

You do realize that 99% of women have used contraception at some point? Married women, single women, Catholic women, Evangelical women–think of any 10 women you know and 9 of them have contraception. That’s not an opinion–that is hard fact. Contrary to your particular religious belief, sex is for pleasure– not only for procreation.

give-em-hell-mary

I would challenge Blissed to convince all his buddies to give up recreational sex. Don’t think they’ll obey him! They’ll probably spit beer in his face as they choke with laughter.

blissed

…and then laugh when told they should consider marrying one of those recreational women. Of course. everyone undertands and accepts thats the way it is. Recreational women are for recreation.

give-em-hell-mary

What age bracket did you poll?– bible camp teens?? You’re confusing diseased, illiterate, low-end, meth-head hookers with smart, funny, pretty and affectionate short- and long-term girlfriends whom your friends do marry after they sort through ambivalent feelings and conflicting career goals. Your buddies marry the very women they’ve already had sex with, and are still attracted to after various ups and downs. All the altar virgins I’ve known divorced because they rudely discovered zero attraction for each other after the wedding. You ludicrously assume all men automatically lose attraction to all single women they have sex with, and automatically stay attracted to altar virgins! Grooms usually dump unattractive, whiny virgin brides, and stick with sexually compatible and fun hotties. Ask straight adult men instead of brainwashed bible teens (who may be closet gays!).

thalwen

Again, the Blessed-MRA-Troll is shocked and appalled by all these slutty, dirty women having all this slutty, dirty sex not with him. This is why he’s looking for that perfect virginal woman who will magically transform into a sexbot once she’s with him. And since she doesn’t exist outside his imagination, he gets to whine and complain about the slutty sluts slutting it up. If he were to somehow get this “perfect” woman, I’m sure he’d be disappointed by something or other.

In the real world people enjoy having sex with each other, it’s natural and tends to get better the more you do it with. In the real world, first time sex, especially if you’re virgins, tends to not be as good as the sex you have once you get to know the person, who you would consider to be used-up. In the real world, most people have sex before marriage and they even get married to people they’ve had sex with. The problem with MRAs is that they see sex as dirty and see it as something a man takes from a woman. A woman generally doesn’t view a man who sees her as existing either for his sexual pleasure or to exist as a wifely maid as very attractive.

ljean8080

don’t think I’ve missed a thing.

give-em-hell-mary

And yet you claimed on another thread that disabled people have normal sex! Guess that excludes you! Your sex-hating attitude and lonely life prove my points about the senseless misery imposed by religious sex-haters.

ljean8080

All the other disabled people I know,are in relationships.I don’t hate sex,i just wanted to be in love.

colleen

You should see what happens when someone suggests to a normal woman that she should consider marrying a Republican or, worse yet, a religious right Republican. Their notion of traditional marriage for women (or 12 year olds for the more fundamentalist types) is a lifetime of hard unpaid work, verbal, physical and emotional abuse and as many pregnancies as possible followed a divorce when the ‘wife’ loses her looks. Republican ‘men’ never hold themselves or each other responsible for anything.

liberaldem

It’s worth remembering that Humanae Vitae was written by men who, by virture of being part of monastic and/or clerical orders never, ever have to deal with the real life implications of being unable to control one’s fertility. These men do not live in the real world.

Thanks for spotlighting the true anti-choice agenda: controlling womens’ lives. If these people genuinely cared about reducing the need for abortion they would have embraced contraception and medically accurate sexuality education for all. They haven’t and we have to call them on this every time that they attempt to blather about “life”.

jennifer-starr

You do realize that you can still find love out there, right? All you have to do is go out and look for it. Love can happen at any age.

ljean8080

A question for anyone who works with Planned Parenthood.IS it true PP does not report suspected cases of child abuse?

jennifer-starr

No, it’s not true.

thalwen

And no one’s saying you can’t make that choice for yourself. But that is your choice. The issue is whether legislatures can force that choice or any other on individuals and whether the government has a legitimate interest in promoting public health, as most people do choose to have sex.

colleen

A question for anyone who works with Planned Parenthood.IS it true PP does not report suspected cases of child abuse?

No, this is not true. You know who it is true of though? The Catholic hierarchy. They not only fail to report (consistently and as a matter of institutional policy) they protect and enable employees who habitually prey on children. They prey on boys and girls, small children and adolescents. They prey on the emotionally vulnerable and physically disabled. The abuse isn’t just sexual, it’s physical and emotional. What’s more, YOU (and Lila Rose) KNOW THIS and you do nothing.

You know who else fails to report? The Boy Scouts. and, of course, there’s the whole Penn State Sandusky business.

The folks who consistently fail to report are men in male dominated institutions. And male dominated institutions appear to often function as pedophile rings. Now, I have all sorts of original source documentation for these claims and, if you’re interested, I will link to it.

The only cites you have are from Lila Rose and her adoring fans and she just isn’t credible.

Here’s what I think. I think that if you or the religious right as a whole gave a crap about child abuse and failure to report child abuse y’all wouldn’t be trolling and attempting to discredit Planned Parenthood with lies but, rather, doing something useful to expose and stop it. Instead you and the religious right ignore the abundant and daily news reports of actual abuse and actual coverups of abuse and failure to report abuse. Instead you throw your shit at us and hope some of it sticks.

ljean8080

know the truth.

give-em-hell-mary

Anti-choicers also always defend their own recent and future “health-, marriage-, career- and reputation-saving” abortions. Priests are never excommunicated when they force abortions on mistresses and raped nuns!

give-em-hell-mary

So you are a romantic like 99% of women! What if you had met the perfect man years ago, but doctors warned you that pregnancy would either kill you or severely worsen your health? If Catholic anti-choicers like my abusive family had control of you, they would have either locked you up to impose permanent abstinence (Magdalene laundries), disfigured your face as mine did or worsened your cerebral palsy to repulse your fiance. They wouldn’t allow you the choice of getting sterilized or using effective contraception. If you were a man, priests would refuse to marry you in a Catholic Church unless you passed a humilating invasive medical penis test. Before Nazinger became pope, he agreed with other German bishops who denied marriage to a man with cerebral palsy who refused to take their “good enough” penis test! A paralyzed man in Argentina was similarly rejected. Throughout RCC history, disabled, sterile and post-menopausal women have also been denied the right to marry.

give-em-hell-mary

The Vatican put a lid on an internal global report that priests were raping nuns and underage girls and forcing Catholic hospitals to perform abortions to hide their crimes. The priests were never punished with excommunication or reported to the police. This atrocity is especially out of control in Africa because of the Vatican’s genocidal ban on condoms to prevent HIV transmissions. Rapist priests at residential schools and missions in Canada and the U.S. also committed infanticide to hide their sex crimes. Indigenous and disabled children were/are also trafficked by greedy nuns to pharmaceutical companies for deadly drug experiments.

ljean8080

my cerebral palsey.

give-em-hell-mary

Many antidepressants cause permanent tremors (tardive dyskinesia).

jennifer-starr

Actually, CP is degenerative and if left untreated it can worsen and lead to permanent joint deformities and worsening of gait and posture. So if someone were to deny a child with CP the therapies they needed, they could make it worse.

ljean8080

My tremors have gotten been.

give-em-hell-mary

If you look into the disgraceful war criminal background of the author of Humanae Vitae, you’ll discover yet another reason to dismiss Humanae Vitae.

give-em-hell-mary

“every sex act must be open to life”

translates as: “every sex act must be open to the premature death of women”

We must not let pedophiles get away with tricking unhealthy women into suicidal pregnancies just so the priests will have unlimited altar boys!

ljean8080

problems.My birth mother had trouble with me and went on and had 2 more kids with no problems.Her heath problems now are due mainly to her smoking.

jennifer-starr

Yes, and millions of women DO have health problems related to childbirth. And often the risk increases with subsequent births–Michelle Duggar for example. Your birth mother is only one woman and hardly representative of everyone.

ljean8080

are of her own making.

colleen

Michelle Duggar is held up as a ROLE MODEL for the Quiverfull movement’s women. She practices a religion that reduces her to a gestation device and she encourages her many, many daughters to devalue themselves in just this manner also. Because God wanted her to be pregnant her entire adult life. Praise Jesus

Imagine what it must be like to be married to Billy Bob or whatever his name is. Every time he ejaculates into her he KNOWS he is risking his wife’s life and yet he brags and jokes on TV about how much fun it is. Michelle Duggar is a non-person. She is a role model for women who don’t want to be people. She does what she is told. Even if it kills her.

That said, social conservatives need to stop pretending that the maternal mortality rate is something liberals made up, particularly when the guys they vote for want to limit access to effective contraception, criminalize abortion and make certain that the US continues to have the most expensive health care in the world.

ljean8080

in the basement.this is HER choice.i have no synpathy for her.

give-em-hell-mary

My mom suffered embarrassing, husband-outsourcing-to-hookers pelvic floor disorders like incontinence, and she took it out on me by disfiguring me as her permanent abstinence excuse. My best friend was gruesomely slowly killed by her last daughter whose pregnancy weaponized my friend’s estrogen-sensitive facial basal cell carcinoma. Don’t assume your mother’s relative luck applies to everyone else. Research pelvic floor disorders and molar pregnancies to get a clue! Read up on Margaret Sanger’s mother (killed by 17 pregnancies) and forgotten colleague, Mary Ware Dennett, whose lady parts and marriage were destroyed by her third pregnancy.

give-em-hell-mary

And check out this “anti-choice” creep who cheated on the mother of his newborn with several mistresses, including a patient of his whom he forced to get an abortion for his own convenience!

And did any of your doctors ever advise you against having children based on your cerebral palsy? Suppose pregnancy by rape threatened your life or stabilized disability?

give-em-hell-mary

You’re ignoring the mental chains of religious Stockholm Syndrome and the lack of affordable and accessible family planning in Catholic poverty pits like the Philippines where “unchained” couples simply have no access!

ljean8080

to have them.I hope your friend’s child is being raised in a a loving home and that they never see you.

colleen

I fully understand that you are incapable of empathy (which is a very different thing from sympathy). I was countering your claim that Mrs Duggar’s situation is entirely of her own making. She has a great deal of support for her suicide by pregnancy martyrdom. An entire political party, several prominent religions and the goomba she married for starters.

Mrs Duggar is brainwashed. She does not think independently. Her religion forbids it.

give-em-hell-mary

“I hope your friend’s child is being raised in a a loving home and that they never see you”

Huh? — “that they never see you”? What do you mean? You hope my friend’s daughter never sees me? Why? Her mother was way more disfigured than me.

For the record, that daughter was relegated by the courts to her abusive dad, who even admitted molesting her, but got custody anyway because he selfishly badgered my friend into risking her face by breeding for him and subsequently lost her nose, lips, palates, eye, ear and finally life. She lost her face and life by giving birth to her very own other woman!

ljean8080

The difference between ADULTS and CHILDREN is that adults have choices.they can leave,fight back.In my aREA A 4 year old died a pretty horrible death because his mother would not stand up to her boyfriend.she is now doing 20 to life because here in Illinois if you are present when A child is killed and it can be proved you did nothing to help the child,in the eyes of the law you are as guilty of murder as the one who killed the child.her name is Kathy Cecil,.

give-em-hell-mary

“adults have choices.they can leave,fight back.”

And yet you get mad when those adults leave their abusive countries and come here without your permission because waiting decades for your permission would mean their deaths!

jennifer-starr

My grandma and grandpa both grew up in large farm families–when they got married they made the personal choice that they wanted to raise a large family. My grandma had seven healthy kids and one miscarriage. Nothing to do with their religion and they are both pro-choice–the size of the family was a personal decision.

Michelle Duggar, on the other hand, is part of a cult which basically says that to refuse sex or even to abstain during her fertile periods is sinful–that it’s going against the will of a God who wants her to have as many children as possible despite the risks to her own health and life. Quiverfull is a purely patriarchal religion that states that the woman must be completely subservient to the male and not to think for herself or have her own opinions. Instead she is to be ruled by the male in her life–first her father and then her husband. Colleen’s right–she has been brainwashed and browbeaten into this mindset. The fact that you have no empathy for her situation is disturbing, to say the least.

ljean8080

NO problem.if they will break 1 law,what other laws will they break?

julie-watkins

I couldn’t find the original website I read a long time ago (which had comparison sketches of heads going through birth canals), but this article mentions bipedalism as well as brainsize for reasons why giving birth is more difficult for humans than for other primates.

A downside of the evolution of efficient bipedalism in humans is that it resulted in changes in the pelvis which unfortunately included a narrower birth canal in females. As a consequence, giving birth is a more difficult and riskier process for us than for most other mammal species. During delivery, human babies must partially rotate laterally twice during their passage through the oval birth canal in order for their comparatively large heads and then their broad shoulders to make it through. This is usually a long, tiring, and painful process for the mother as well as a risky one for her baby. Because of this, human mothers generally seek help from a “midwife” for the delivery. Other primates give birth without assistance. A partial evolutionary solution to this birth difficulty for humans was fetuses being born at a less mature stage, when their heads and torsos are smaller. The trade off is that human infants are more vulnerable.

Nature’s sexism, yes. Normally a process can permanently harm or kill, those genes don’t breed true. Not unless there’s an evolutionary tradeoff that helps the species as a whole. Evolution threw women under the bus! I’m sorry your mother & other people who didn’t get optimal genes for their circumstances aren’t given better understanding & support by goverment & society. Grump.

ljean8080

The daughter is not ‘the other woman’.She is as much his victum as her mother was.Your feelings towards an innocent child is why I hope you never see her.God knows what you would say to her.

julie-watkins

build or remodelled after JPII. Across from the building where I work there’s a church/residence complex [college town], and it had an unassuming cafeteria where I would sometimes get lunch. After it was remodelled & expanded … I couldn’t stomache going into the new bright!shinny! space. I entered & left within minutes, and have never gone back in. The pedophile priest scandels & homophopic deflection attempts were too much. I even avoid the public sidewalk as much as possible. Yuck. Luckily, no one’s invited me to go with them to lunch there.

give-em-hell-mary

Miss Know-It-All, I did meet her at her mother’s funeral when she was about 15 years old, said NOTHING to her about her worsening her mother’s face cancer, and she still treated me like an icky ugly loser spinster pal of her “loser” martyred mother. She thought of herself as a stunning natural beauty queen, and the rest of her mother’s loyal friends as ugly losers like her poor mother. I greeted her and she shuddered with repulsion and refused to acknowledge me. I feared she also loathed her mother because of her horrific cancer disfigurement. The brat also snubbed everyone else at the funeral by pouting in the car most of the time. How about some sympathy for me? — I didn’t deserve my mother’s disfiguring abuse when I was in first grade.

ljean8080

why didn’t she stop the abuse?you act like this girl committed a crime.she did not ask to be born.she is as innocent as you are.

give-em-hell-mary

The abusive dad started beating my friend when she was 5 months pregnant because she “looked fat”, never mind that he bullied her into the pregnancy to please his own parents, despite warnings from her oncologists! He also insulted her in the delivery room because childbirth grossed him out. He almost immediately dumped her and absconded with their daughter to other states. Within a few months of the childbirth, my friend’s cancer turned aggressive as her doctors had predicted. She was already on disability, so you know she had no money to fight him with lawyers. Nevertheless, she did spend cancer money on lawyers instead and reported him to all kinds of authorities in various states. Keep in mind that it became very difficult for her to read, speak, eat and breathe as she only had one eye and ear and no nose to hold up glasses, let alone breathe through. Her speech was difficult to understand, and her appearance was very shocking, so she had a tough time with family court officials who ruled in her ex-husband’s favor because she had no nose! You have no clue how impossibly punishing motherhood can be for many women!

give-em-hell-mary

So your solution is that they must obey YOU, stay home and wait for the death squads! You’re not so pro-life after all!

give-em-hell-mary

These risks would be somewhat more acceptable if spoiled looksist pedophile and playboy patriarchs didn’t keep forcing excessive pregnancies on us, then accusing us of and torching us for “witchcraft” over “devil’s marks” stretch marks!

ljean8080

.in fact,they say it’s a pretty nice place to live.

give-em-hell-mary

Guess you never heard of the 50,000 Mexicans gruesomely murdered by the drug cartels, the grisly unsolved femicides in Juárez or the countless other genocides further south.

Many of your dreaded “Mexicans” are from Central and South American failed states, but had to pass through Mexico on their way here. Brown Latinos must all look and sound alike to you!

jennifer-starr

All in all it would’ve been better for everyone if the pregnancy had been terminated or never conceived in the first place.

jennifer-starr

You have either got to be joking or just incredibly ignorant. Mexico is hell. Not only do the drug cartels run just about everything in sight, but they also have many of the government officials and the police riding in their pockets. The level of corruption makes 1920s Chicago look like a Sunday School. You might be able to live well–providing you’re incredibly wealthy and can afford to purchase a lot of security, but for the average person? Forget about it.

ljean8080

take a guess where the cartels will head to.I know there are safe parts of Mexico,because people from the US move down there to retire/

jennifer-starr

Yes. Wealthy people who like the low taxes and can afford to pay a lot of money on security.

give-em-hell-mary

Many Americans have stopped moving and vacationing there because the cartels have taken over the best areas. The cartels are powerful because they recruit forced birth desperately poor youths (blame the pedophile-serving RCC for that), and many GOP billionaires allow the cartels to money launder through Wall Street (Bernie Madoff hosted hooker and coke parties for his clients) and U.S. banks (like Citibank and Wachovia). These GOP billionaires want open borders for many reasons, including profitting off the slave labor of illegals, winning government border security and detention camp contracts, organ harvesting and trafficking kids to pedophile priests and billionaires. Blame the corrupt treasonous billionaires and pedophile Catholic Churtch instead of their raped, starved and trafficked Mexican victims!

give-em-hell-mary

Exactly! My friend would still be alive and her ungrateful last daughter would have been born later to someone else, perhaps one of her adult sons or given-up-for-adoption adult daughter (whom she never was able to track down).

thalwen

People have been coming here and elsewhere illegally for ages. Most do not commit other crimes just like the rest of the population, in fact probably less so. They take a huge risk in coming here, especially if they are travelling across the border which has a very high risk of death. They come to make money for their families, so it isn’t in their interest to get arrested for engaging in criminal activity. It is also why they keep quiet about employer mistreatment.

Also, you seem fond of asking rather inflamatory questions about undocumented people, PP, etc, is that because you beat your wife? Not that I’m saying you do, but you know, just want to know.

thalwen

She is a role model for that movement, she’s also a celebrity and knows that she can leave, get some flack, get a book deal etc. She is a disgusting human being along with her husband and the leadership of the Quiverfull movement.

It’s her kids I feel sorry for. The girls who become de facto mothers as soon as they’re old enough to be assigned a sibling to raise. The boys and girls that get a bullshit education that doesn’t prepare them for any opportunities apart from minimum wage jobs and staying in the fundamentalist community. The children who have their spouses chosen and approved for them by their father/owners. The girls who are taught they are male property for their entire life, and their entire value is between their legs. The women who live in abusive relationships who can’t leave because they have 6 kids, no education and nowhere to go. The families that live in poverty because having unlimited children with one person working with minimal education isn’t exactly a formula for financial solvency. The girls and women who can’t report their rape because the community will blame them. These are the people I feel sorry for.

This is the crap Mr. and Mrs. Duggar promote everytime they make a new show. They are rich, they have plenty of opportunities, and they choose to promote a movement that inherently promotes abuse of women and children. I have no pity for her. She chooses to put her life at risk. Other women in that movement aren’t so lucky to have that choice or any choice at all.

julie-watkins

in recognition of burden on the individual woman and more community help and support for the raising of children, we’d be a better society.

ljean8080

don’t you?

forced-birth-rape

My father a southern Baptist preachers son, Sunday school teacher, and deacon at my grand fathers southern Baptist church, said he did not think rape was a bid deal. My Christian father was also pleasured by the pain women have when they give birth.

Men who want women and girls pregnant when women and girls do not want to be pregnant, men who want to FORCE women and girls to be pregnant and give birth against her will, are sexually sadistic and sexually abusive.

Pro-lifers get their ideas from a book that uses pregnancy and child birth to cause women and little girls physical and emotional pain. And their book the bible is pro-little girl rape, nothing makes a pro lifer hornier then a little girl being forced to breed with her rapist, that is pro-life porn.

forced-birth-rape

If they give them birth control, the child raping, rape loving christian men will not have enough virgin children to rape. Thank you for speaking up for third world women and little girls.

jennifer-starr

It has nothing to do with hatred, it’s simply an acknowledgment that women with life-threatening conditions shouldn’t be forced to conceive or give birth against their will.

julie-watkins

border crossed us” — in that USA stole lots of land from Mexico*, then only white people had a good chance of having their land documents honored.

Why is it we don’t have strong controls on money (so profits can be hidden off shore so not taxed) but people are “illegal”? Big Ag and other corporations need a steady supply of cheap labor they can intimidate, and to keep the prevalling wages as low as possible.

*[which was Spain stealing from local residents]

give-em-hell-mary

If you were psychic, you would know that I don’t hate the girl, just her mean teen beauty queen ingratitude for her mother’s suffering and the throw-all-mothers-under-the-bus misogyny that created that family’s domestic chaos.

give-em-hell-mary

My late friend worried that her teen daughter was being pressured by the ex-in-laws to pump out babies within the next couple years.

rebellious-grrl

Wow you’re anti-choice and anti-immigrant too. First off, no human being is illegal. Calling someone an “illegal alien” or just an “illegal” is a pejorative term that is offensive. If baffles me that the “conservative right” says is “pro-family” but they want to split up families by deporting parents.

rebellious-grrl

Excellent point Julie. Did you catch the interview with Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now discussing his new book, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America? If you missed it, it’s online at http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/25/harvest_of_empire_new_book_exposes. I haven’t read the book yet, but your post echos his interview on Democracy Now. I wish more American’s understood the history of Latinos in the U.S. and the forced immigration of Latin Americans because of the U.S.s military interventions in their countries and the abusive power of big Ag.

give-em-hell-mary

Just as the RCC and GOP invent “pro-life family values” as their lipstick-on-a-pig-conscription of women’s bodies for forced breeding, U.S. elites have been inventing wars to justify confiscating land and resources from foreign nations all around the globe.

You’re missing the point again! You have no problem with our criminal politicians doing illegal things in their home countries, thereby making their homes suddenly unlivable. Would you want to be called an illegal criminal tresspasser if your house, town and entire state were firebombed, flooded or otherwise dangerously contaminated overnight by greedy corporations, and you were forced to flee on foot (with your cerebral palsy!) with no suitcase or much cash to another unprepared state with no Red Cross or FEMA tent cities set up for you and your millions of displaced neighbors? You would end up squatting illegally in store parking lots. If you lived near the Mexican border and this environmental emergency forced you into Mexico, how soon would you learn Spanish, or would you just whine for anti-choice GOP billionaires to come rescue you?

julie-watkins

Not a word wasted, applause.

julie-watkins

I don’t have time to read it now, but someone has the library copy checked out anyway. (good!) I wonder if that other person also watched that interview? The local Imigration Forum posted a link to the video clip, which is how I got pointed there.

I should watch the doumentary also, but that will probably be a while.

Edited to add: Actually, I’ve read/heard this in various forms from various sources — which is good. I’m glad the situation is finally getting on the radar & not just trapped in Spanish language discussions.

give-em-hell-mary

Thank you! And I love and am learning from your comments too! I am not a cable subscriber, but the DC area has some decent alternative news sources. We have the Pacifica Network radio station WPFW and the Howard University TV channel 32 which both carry Democracy Now. The Virginia-based MHZ network has several international TV channels, including Russia Today and Al Jezeera.

ljean8080

learn Spanish,i would not demand the counrtry learn English. My hispanic brother in law killed my sister and then went on his merry way.she would check into rehab he brought drugs to her,when he was banned from visting he told her, if you don’t come home i’ll disapear with our daughter.her doctor,who was also hispanic,said it’s too bad you can’t shot him in the head.

julie-watkins

I learn lots from lots of people here. I don’t watch TV. What I see is when people link to video clips.

jennifer-starr

My hispanic brother in law killed my sister and then went on his merry way.she would check into rehab he brought drugs to her,when he was banned from visting he told her, if you don’t come home i’ll disapear with our daughter.her doctor,who was also hispanic,said it’s too bad you can’t shot him in the head.

Very sad story, but if you’re trying to use it to make a point you’ve failed. What does your brother in law’s race have to do with anything?

give-em-hell-mary

I’m delighted that you wouldn’t demand Mexico reprint all its signs in English just for you, but Jennifer is right to be concerned that you are reading race into substance and domestic abuse.

thalwen

Really, and my friend’s dad got sent to prison for possessing child porn. He was also white and spoke English. Therefore, no one should speak English and white people need to get out of the the country because this guy was a perv. Also, since you insist on making poor implications that Hispanics and undocumented immigrants are all violent, evil criminals, which is a really insulting stereotype hurled at people who are merely trying to support their families, I will ask again, do you beat your wife?

Also, you act like learning a language is just so easy. Many, especially the elderly have a hard time learning a new language. Not to mention that most new immigrants (with and without papers) have a job (sometimes several), a family, and don’t have time to learn a new language. I know personally, as I’ve been learning a foreign language for years, it is hard and it takes time and practise and when you don’t have that, it’s that much harder. So just saying learn English is quite ignorant.

ljean8080

to learn Spanish?your friend’s dad is a sick freak.

thalwen

No, but maybe if you did, you’d have more respect for people who make up the majority of our continent. You throw out all these “questions” and anecdotes because your anti-woman/anti-immigrant views aren’t supported by facts and you don’t want to just say you don’t like women/immigrants/Hispanics. It’s a well known advertising strategy, but it tends to only work on the ignorant and I’d wager most readers of this site aren’t.

Yes, my friend’s dad was a sick asshole, your brother in law is a criminal, that doesn’t mean that all people who fit them in one demographic are as well. That is a ridiculous and disingenious argument.

curtislowe

I seriously laugh at this article. You think we don’t want free birth control everywhere because of sex??!! How about who will foot the bill? If it’s not out-of-pocket than it will come from tax-payers. That’s just facism. Forcing others to pay for your prevention methods because you’re too cheap to pay for it yourself is ridiculous. Oh! Before you call me chauvinistic and anti-feminist, I’m female.

give-em-hell-mary

You are a selfish traitorous chauvinist who ignores how expensive and hard to access preferred methods of BC are for low-income and geographically challenged women. You think making $50-100 prescriptions “free” (already paid for by insurance premiums!) is “worse” than $100,000+ ob/gyn bills and their $3.5 million dollar Down Syndrome “accidents”? And yet you won’t whine about forcing me to pay for abortion-resulting Viagra for pedophile priests and adulterous GOP thugs like DesJarlais! You are fascist!

colleen

Oh! Before you call me chauvinistic and anti-feminist, I’m female.

here’s some reality, asshole. 1. It’s entirely possible to be a chauvinistic sexist asshole and still be female. Indeed that is the only sort of woman the GOP promotes. 2. Nobody names their girl children Curtis.

ljean8080

over the course of their lifetime.Very few cost that at birth.

give-em-hell-mary

“Nobody names their girl children Curtis.”

LOL! — I didn’t even look at the troll’s name! And I’ll bet it is preceded by “Father” or “Reverend” and followed by a pedophile arrest record!